'Game of Thrones' spikes George Bush's head; 'not a political statement,' say producers

HBOKing Joffrey of Westeros -- a Democrat, in addition to the rest of his sins?

Cable giant HBO issued an apology today for impaling the head of former President George W. Bush -- or at least, a model of his head -- on a stick.

The notable noggin got speared in the finale of hit fantasy series "Game of Thrones" first season, in a scene in which boy king Joffrey shows off a series of impaled heads to his horrified fiance, Sansa.

The head is only seen for a moment, and is under a wig. It's likely no one would have noticed Bush's head hovering over the scene -- if the producers themselves hadn't pointed it out on the DVD commentary.

Show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss admit that the head is in the scene, according to EW.com, but say the choice wasn't politically motivated.

"It's not a choice, not a political statement....We just had to use what heads we had around," the writers said.

Because who doesn't have a couple ex-presidential heads lying around?

In a screen grab from a "Game of Thrones" DVD, a likeness of President George W. Bush's head is seen impaled on a spike (under a frazzled wig).

After the head was noticed, HBO issued a public statement to several outlets, including sci-fi website io9.com, that read:

"We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."

Benioff and Weiss also issued a statement, explaining the heads-just-lying-around state of a "Game of Thrones" set further:

"What happened was this: we use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can't afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush.

"In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise."